Native American Basketball History Links To Black Fives, Naismith, And Carlisle, Pennsylvania


We look at the old Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and how its pioneering basketball program had links to African-American teams during the Black Fives Era.

The Carlisle School had first achieved worldwide fame in 1912 when Jim Thorpe – one of its student-athletes – won two Olympic gold medals in Antwerp. This was while Thorpe was a star on the school’s football team under head coach “Pop” Warner, and that year they also won the national championship.

The Carlisle Indian School basketball team, 1918
The Carlisle Indian School basketball team, 1918. (Carlisle, PA Historical Archives)

The school had been formed in 1879 with a mission to “civilize” Native American children by taking them away from their reservations and traditional ways of life in an effort to “transform” them effectively into White people.

Their unofficial motto spoke to the brutality that was employed: “Kill the Indian, Save the man.”

The school’s founder, Richard Henry Pratt, had at one point been in command of African-American troops as an officer in the U.S. Army’s 10th Cavalry, known as the Buffalo Soldiers.

At that time, the Army patrolled Oklahoma’s “Indian Territory” as “peacekeepers,” which in reality meant keeping Native Americans on their assigned reservations and away from settlers, so that their land could be taken away more peacefully.

When such peacekeeping efforts failed, tribal warriors were killed. Survivors were incarcerated, trained in various skills, and possibly eventually released. Of those released, Pratt persuaded some to enroll at Hampton Institute (now Hampton University), the historically Black college in Virginia, for further education.

Postcard showing the Carlisle Indian School gymnasium, circa 1910. (Black Fives Archives)
Postcard showing the Carlisle Indian School gymnasium, circa 1910. (Black Fives Foundation Archives)

Hampton became the model Pratt later used to form the Carlisle Indian Industrial School.

By the mid-1910s, many of the Native American students at Hampton Institute were playing basketball, and some were making major contributions to Hampton’s varsity team, which won the Black intercollegiate national championship in 1914-15.

Native Indian students – close to 1,400 in total – continued to attend Hampton under government sponsorship until the early 1920s.

Though the Carlisle School had a famous and proud heritage in football and track, their basketball squad, known as the Carlisle Indians, was also talented and popular. 

Hampton Institute’s varsity basketball team, 1913 (Black Fives Foundation Archives)

In 1915, the Carlisle Indians caught the attention of African-American basketball pioneer Will Anthony Madden, then the basketball editor at the New York Age newspaper and the manager of the St. Christopher Club basketball team in New York City, who scheduled a game with Carlisle at the Manhattan Casino in Harlem. 

By then, Hampton was on its way to winning the 1915-6 Colored Basketball World’s Championship and had appeared in games at the Manhattan Casino several times.

“If the Indians can play basketball as well as they play football,” Madden predicted, a leading African-American newspaper, “or if they can play as well as the Indians on Hampton’s basketball team, they will undoubtedly make it interesting for the Parish House boys.”

James Naismith, the game’s inventor, mentioned the same Carlisle basketball team in his book, Basketball: Its Origins and Development. “Carlisle was the first Indian school to play basketball,” Naismith noted, “but the success that it met with there showed that the game was especially adapted to Indian youth.”

Naismith explained in detail why he believed that basketball became so well-suited and popular among Native Americans:

I have talked to several coaches of Indian teams and have found that coaching a team of Indian boys presents several problems that are not found among white boys. One coach told me that he had several good players who would not take part in the sport for fear of ridicule, and that some of the boys felt it inexcusable to make a mistake. They would not run this chance before a group of people. Besides, the Indian teams are usually made up of comparatively small men. This fact is a distinct handicap to them; but their ability to move quickly and their art of deception overcome the disadvantage of their height, so that wherever these teams play they are assured of a large crowd of spectators.

Naismith

Native Americans had always been embraced in Black communities, and with such popularity that during the 1910s one all-Black sports organization in Brooklyn named itself the Indian Laetitia Athletic Club and another team in Washington, D.C. called themselves the Hiawatha Cardinals.

Today, Native Americans in the game are supported by organizations such as the Native American Basketball Invitational Foundation (NABI Foundation)(@nabi.nation), whose mission is to encourage participation and promotion of basketball among tribal nations, whether playing grassroots “rez ball” or beyond.

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9 years ago

In the 1920s Jim Thorpe organized a basketball team “World Famous Indians.” My father, who played football for the Giants at that time, played with Thorpe under an assumed Indian name. This was a barnstorming team and I wondered if in your research on the early Black Fives any of these games came to light?

[…] Americans have played basketball for over a century, they were among the first people to embrace the sport. Basketball would become a part of their culture in many […]

14 years ago

I am looking for photos and articles about the old Traveling Sioux basketball team out of Rose Bud and/or Ft. Thompson. Thanks!

15 years ago

claude-

you continually blow my mind with history, homeboy!

KD
15 years ago

two years ago our new high school arena was completed in Chinle Az and we hosted our regionals which sold out both times and seats 6500 but filled at capacity like during our sell outs easily holds 8500. great views from any spot in the building also. We are located geographically in the center of the Navajo Nation.

Matt
15 years ago

Hampton Institute also won the inaugural CIAA champhionship in 1912 behind the stellar play of their leading scorer, George Gunroe (a Native American)….

15 years ago

Don’t forget that Naismith also coached at the Haskell Institute (now Haskell Indian Nations University) here in Lawrence, KS

GJ
15 years ago

The 3A/4A Arizona high school playoffs are routinely the most crowded/raucous in Phoenix because of the rez schools. Tuba City, AZ (pop.8800) on the Navajo reservation is about 50 miles from anywhere and has a gymnasium that seats 6500.

15 years ago

Interesting post, fascinated with sports history. I’ll have to check out the Native American Basketball site.